Unlike companies in some other industries, electric utilities have no margin for error. When a switch is flipped, the lights must turn on. It’s not simply about preventing an inconvenience- access to electricity enables the preservation of human life. That responsibility is why, many years ago, utilities were granted exemptions to laws that prevented monopolies.
From a conference room tucked away from the bustling customer event organized by smart grid software developer OATI in Las Vegas last October, Sasan Mokhtari, the company’s president and CEO, thought about the relationships he’s forged over the past two decades, and how the industry he serves has changed.
Over that time, Minneapolis-based OATI has grown from its roots in bulk power system energy markets to a leader in advanced distribution software. Its distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) is used by utilities facing a rapidly evolving power grid. And while consolidation is rampant throughout the energy industry, especially among software providers, OATI has stayed the course- rebuffing otherwise advantageous acquisitions in favor of developing solutions from the ground up.
That direction wasn’t made by accident, Mokhtari told POWERGRID. “Trust,” he says, “is the name of the game” for utility leaders, many of whom value long-term stability and loyalty alongside safety and reliability.
“That trust comes with time. This is not something that you earn overnight,” Mokhtari explained.
Mokhtari’s background helps to explain his conviction. An IEEE “Life Fellow,” he’s a rare example of a technologist and engineer leading a software company’s C-Suite, a position often reserved for savvy financiers or business management professionals. It’s a major reason why Mokhtari gets it, without having to hand off complicated aspects of his products to junior team members.
OATI’s role as a technology innovator has placed it at the center of the energy industry’s transformation, helping grid operators and utilities navigate the convergence of renewables, distributed energy resources (DERs), and digital infrastructure.
For Mokhtari, the stakes are deeply personal. Utilities face unique pressures, and reliability is non-negotiable.
“Unlike software companies that are consumer-facing or serve an industry that isn’t regulated and isn’t expected to attain perfection like the utility industry, our product cannot fail,” Mokhtari said. “We need to be as reliable as the grid itself.”
The grid’s resilience, according to Mokhtari, depends on integrating technological innovation with a deep understanding of power systems. If you don’t understand the engineering, he said, “it will not work.” For OATI, this means bridging the gap between emerging technologies, like DERs and AI-driven analytics, and the operational realities of running a grid.
That’s been the focus throughout the design of OATI’s Enterprise DERMS platform, Mokhtari said, which allows utilities to simplify operations “under a single pane of glass.” Fragmented systems, he argues, can create opportunities for failure, and relying on interoperability heightens risks for utilities. A unified DERMS platform naturally works in concert while reducing the number of accountable parties to one.
“These changes are very difficult,” Mokhtari said. “It’s a major transformation… But Enterprise DERMS provide that delivery mechanism.”
From analog to digital
The power grid didn’t look like it does today when Mokhtari was starting out. He remembers operating analog systems.
Despite early resistance from the industry, digital technology was woven into the fabric of OATI from the beginning. While nearly all utilities rely on cloud infrastructure today, the idea was “unheard of” when OATI first suggested that utilities house energy trading and financial services on someone else’s servers. Today, offsite data management is an industry standard.
With that transition, and building of trust, came responsibility.
“We never violated or endangered that trust,” Mokhtari said.
OATI built that trust over time, in large part due to word of mouth. Their marketing budget never aimed to compete with industry heavyweights. Instead, Mokhtari and his teams focused on iterating products that spoke for themselves.
Especially in recent years, Mokhtari has seen companies, particularly in energy and climate, “rush toward the attention” with creative messaging that covers technology gaps. That’s left utilities wary of the broader vendor community, he said, and hesitant to outsource IT systems, let alone vital grid services.
Mokhtari reiterated OATI’s customer-first philosophy, which he described as treating the company as “an extension of the customer.” This approach has fostered relationships that span decades. “Our relationship with our customers is very, very good,” Mokhtari said proudly. “They trust us, and they know we are here for the long haul.”
A clear path forward
The challenges ahead are considerable: managing grid complexity, accelerating clean energy adoption, and ensuring reliability in an increasingly dynamic environment. But Mokhtari remains optimistic about the industry’s capacity for progress.
“We are turning [utilities’] lives upside down,” he admitted, acknowledging the scale of change. “But they are doing such a fantastic job… they are showing the opposite of what people expect. Utilities are moving fast, and I don’t know any other group that could have done this.”
For Mokhtari and OATI, the future lies in trust, innovation, and building systems that empower utilities to manage the grid efficiently. “This is my hobby,” he said. “We love what we do, and we feel we are contributing.”
